Being A Trump Supporter Is No Longer Allowed, It Seems

Tommy Lee is the new voice of the American Left. The drummer for Mötley Crüe and convicted wife-beater laid out in florid terms his plans for what the Left will do in a few years to the 47% of America that voted for President Trump.

Lee’s essay, posted on Twitter Friday morning, began “You Trumpsters better pray that liberals never gain control of the WH again because we are going to pay you back so f—ing hard for all of this shit.” Lee’s proposals, including taxing churches out of business and throwing condoms out of planes at noncoastal Americans, were creative, and his language was colorful. But the basic notion — that Trump supporters deserve to suffer — is mainstream these days.

Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, the brother of presidential candidate Julián Castro, didn’t go to Tommy Lee’s lengths, but he had the same message: It’s not okay to be a Trump supporter, and you ought to be publicly shamed for the crime.

Joaquin posted on Twitter the names and occupations of his constituents in San Antonio who had given the maximum contribution to Trump.

He, his brother, and some liberal commentators have fiercely defended the action. Castro invoked the Washington Examiner to point out that donor lists are public and that news outlets like ours regularly report who is donating to whom. This is just democracy, we’re told; it’s about holding Trump supporters “accountable,” a liberal writer at Esquire explained.

These defenses make two errors.

First, when we in the media report on donors, or when politicians discuss their opponents’ donors, that is typically an attempt to hold the recipients accountable. For instance, when we pointed out the lobbyist donors to Barack Obama, it was in order to point out the farce that was his purported “ban on lobbyist donations.” Often, a candidate will point out his opponent’s donors to argue that the opponent is too cozy with a certain special interest.

Castro was doing the opposite. He wasn’t trying to hold Trump accountable but trying to shame his own constituents for supporting Trump.

This highlights the other error. It is the voters’ job to hold our elected officials accountable, not the other way around. There is something chilling about a member of Congress publicly scolding his constituents for having “bad politics.”

Increasingly, Democrats and the media believe there is no tolerable excuse to support Trump. Hence the boycotts recently of expensive exercise-bike outfit SoulCycle (whose chairman hosted a Trump fundraiser) and a viral fact-challenged tweet leading confused celebrities to call for boycotts of McDonald’s and KFC (which employ some people who have donated to Trump).

It’s a radical position and not one that leaves us optimistic about the health of our democracy.

Source:  Washington Examiner